"I telephone every single day, but nobody picks up on the other end," Marie Pierre, a Haitian who works at Garland, a fruit and vegetable importer and distributor in Miami, told AFP, distraught.

Like many Haitians here, she would rather not address the possibility she may have lost her family in a tragedy that has claimed at least 75,000 lives and perhaps many thousands more.

She would rather believe she could hear from them at any time, even as a huge aftershock rocked the Caribbean nation Wednesday.

"I haven't heard a thing from my brothers, from my sisters, from anybody," she said.

"If there is anybody in Port-au-Prince who knows what happened with them and can help me, please," she said, noting her entire family lived in the ravaged Haitian capital.

Haiti's population tops nine million. And there are more than half a million Haitians living in the United States, more than 300,000 of whom live in the US state of Florida, officials say.

Since the 7.0-force earthquake left the capital of their Caribbean country in ruins January 12, thousands upon thousands here in Florida have been waiting desperately, frustrated and helpless, for news of their loved ones.

With some calls starting to get through in recent days, the news for many has been tragic.

George Cadet, another worker at Garland, says he learned he had lost his brother and two small nephews.

"I feel so terrible, really worse every day," Cadet said. "A lot of people have had news, and in most cases, they have found out that they have loved ones who were killed."

At the Notre Dame D'Haiti church, Father Jean Marie Reginald sees people day and night searching for a reason for what has happened at home. He tries to console them, but he also has lost relatives.

"I just found out yesterday that they brought my brother out of the rubble on Saturday. But we still do not have any word on my sister, Doude, who is just 15," said the priest, 44, a fixture in Miami's Little Haiti, which some 75,000 Haitians call home.

Windsy Forestal said that while he has heard second hand that his relatives were not hurt, he has not been able to contact anyone by phone and is desperately worried about them.

"I haven't spoken with anybody, and I am not sure about anything," Forestal said.

"I have my wife Axelle-Pierre and daughter Annie-Mayard, just 1-1/2, in Port-au-Prince," he said, quietly adding: "I don't know if they are alive."

US immigration officials on Wednesday said there were no signs as yet of a mass exodus of Haitians fleeing their earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation by boat or raft for the United States.

"We are not seeing any indication that a massive migration" is underway, said Matt Chandler, spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Miami.

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